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Couldn't work out if this was the best forum for this topic but it seemed to be the best fit.

Does anyone know where my band can get some cheap cardboard cd sleeves printed for when we have recorded our next ep? As we live in the UK suggestions of printers over here would be good.

if you do a google search for 'printed cd wallets' it'll throw up a few things, such as this place: http://www.amstore.co.uk/cd-dvd/printed.html

you'll probably have to submit details and get a quote from all of these companies though.

another place to try is www.ukbands.net , i've use them for getting cds pressed up and they were the cheapest i could find (£400 for 1000 cds in card wallets, 1 colour print on packaging and cd, inc delivery). the guy's quite helpful, i think his name's neil, if i remember. it'd be worth signing up and dropping him an email, he might be able to get you a good price on wallets without the cds if that's what you're after.

there's a lot of places. usually you get a better deal when you spend liek $1000 on duplication and shit.

£400 for 1000 cds in wallets is ok, but we'd never be able to get rid of 1000 cds.

we offer free cds at gigs. we played 5 times in a year and gave away about 50 or 60 cds. we've played most of the gigs with the same band so it's pretty much the same people there every time so the first couple of gigs we gave away all we took and the last couple even though we took less cds there were leftovers which seems disappointing when your giving them away free...

One of the gigs we played at short notice and didn't tell anyone we knew for various reasons. The room emptied after the first band (all their friends leaving) and so we played to 5 people (a couple of people in one of the bands playing that night and a couple of people who stayed to watch all the bands rather than just watching their friends band). As soon as we finished the next band on came upstairs accompanied by the few people they'd brought to see them. I really wouldn't have minded if everyone stayed for our first song and walked out - that'd be fair enough, but to walk out before we'd even started.... That seems to be the way things work with some bands in sheffield - they bring people to see them and the people that come to see them don't even listen to a single song played by any of the other bands.

that happens quite a lot, and i've found that organising gigs with bands you like rather than letting 'promoters' do it lessens it somewhat.

other than when we first started gigging we've never played gigs wit "promoters". i think we organised a gig about 12 years ago. other than that we've almost always played gigs we were asked to do by other bands (the others have been gigs that we've been asked to play by a soundman for a previous gig).

It's the same situation in London, people coming to see their mate's shit band and buggering off before my awesome band plays. If they actually bothered to hang around and see one or two songs that might actually find they like us, after all they're paid to see all the bands playing that night. It annoys me even more if we've lent one of the other bands gear and they leave before we have even played.

We have played with a lot of other poo bands, but one band we played with the other week really took the cake. They had the worst drummer I have ever seen and 2 exceptionally dull guitarists. Worst of all though was their singer, it was almost like the rest of the band had met him on the way to the venue and asked him of he wanted to sing for them that night despite having no singing ability whatsoever. Their bass player was ok though. It made me think though that if you were in a band that were seriously that bad would you not know that you and your songs were rubbish? It was probably their first gig and I suppose everyone has to start somewhere, i'd be interested to see how many of their friends that turned up to that gig turn up for their next one.

stewart - I forgot to say thanks for the info.

1000 may be too many, like johnniespring it would take us ages to get rid of that many cd's. The last recording we did we copied about 120 at home and just put them in clear plastic sleeves and stuck stickers on the outside that I sneakily printed at work using company resources. I think we still have a couple left and we started giving them out about 6 months ago. We're trying to do things a bit more professionally this time though. I think 200-300 would be the maximum we would need. It's a shame our old singer left, his dad is a printer and he could have probably done them for us for free.

the way these things work is pretty straightforward- if you're using a lithographic press (as most professional printers with the capability of doing large runs are), it costs effectively the same amount to print one item as it does 10,000. all the costs are in the initial setup (excluding paper, but that's generally not expensive). this is why you see people offering deals of say, 1000 units for £500, and 500 units for £400. it really is cheaper the more you get, it's not just a marketing ploy. conversely, if you go somewhere and use a laser copier, each printed unit is a fixed cost, and the more you get, the more expensive it gets.

so i suppose you'd just need to take into consideration how many units you think you need, and find the most cost-effective way of producing the covers. why not think of options that will give you a professional look but doesn't cost any money? maybe trying to hunt down an interesting paper (or make your own- making paper isn't as difficult as you'd think), wrap the discs up somehow and seal them with a printed sticker? that way you can all sit and make them, and you'll have a unique design for your product.

or have a think about something like this- in 1980 postcard records released a 7" single by orange juice called blueboy, and it came out at the same time as their labelmates josef k's radio drill time. the company had artwork pressed up which was essentially a 14" square with black and white artwork on each side, blueboy on one, radio drill time on the other. when it was folded up you either had a cover for one single or the other. 1000 of these each were then given to the bands along with a load of felt-tip pens, and each band coloured their own artwork and left the opposing side plain. the result is a cheap yet highly individual cover (each one was different) and in time they've become extremely collectable. like so:




so that sort of thing can be done on a black and white photocopier for next to nothing, you just need a bit of imagination and free time.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've had similar thoughts before but not yet nailed down what I want to do.

if you need help with artwork i'm occasionally always willing to lend a hand, even if you just want a qualified eye cast over something, suggestions, etc.

Thanks for the offer. I've got an artistic friend who is going to design something simple for us which, from his suggestions, sounds like it would look pretty good. The artwork will be in black and white to which should reduce costs for printing, I could maybe even do it at work when nobody is looking.

My idea for the sleeve is to print the artwork on regular paper to cd size, put the cd in a cardboard sleeve with the printed cover wrapped around it and then put both in a clear plastic cd sleeve to hold it all together. Does that sound ok to you?

that'd work fine, i've done the same thing myself but without the cardboard, just a folded bit of paper with the artwork on it.

The cardboard sleeve idea was to stop the piece of paper with the artwork on it from getting all creased up when the cd is taken in and out of the sleeve.